The weather was so bad on Wednesday that the wind might just have blown your ashes off your forehead if you did get a chance to receive them sometime during the day. From our morning to our evening services here at St. Peter’s, with a handful of visitors through the day, more than 50 people received the dust of Ash Wednesday here yesterday. Which means Lent has officially begun.
If you were able to attend an Episcopal service on Ash Wednesday, you might have heard the bidding prayer that describes what the season is to be for us as the collective Body of Christ in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. I love our tradition of bidding prayers, which you’ll find in the Book of Common Prayer at the start of many of our liturgies. “Dearly beloved,” we begin, or “beloved in the Lord,” and then we explain what this liturgy or season means to us.
The bidding prayer for Lent that we say on Ash Wednesday is worth revisiting if you are wondering how this season might shape you and how you might shape your own Lenten practice. You’ll find it on pages 264-265 of the Book of Common Prayer. It begins:
"Dear people of God, The Holy Scriptures tell us of God’s loving purpose in creation: to raise up a holy people worthy of eternal life."
The prayer then reminds us how God has set about that loving purpose through prophets and teachers, and finally by sharing human life with us as Jesus. It reminds us of our Baptismal call “to work with God for the healing of the nations.”
And because that’s easier said than done, we need Lent:
"Yet we continue to fall short of the holiness for which we were made and to turn aside to our own purposes, weakening our witness and failing to fulfill the ministries to which we are called. We stand in constant need of the forgiveness that Jesus proclaimed and which he commissioned the disciples to offer."
Therefore, from very early times, the Church has set aside the season of Lent as a time when God’s people are called to repent their sins and to renew the promises made at their baptism.
The prayer reminds us that during Lent we are called to examine our way of life, to put aside all self-indulgence, and to engage in a lived discipline, “centered again on our Baptismal covenant of faith and witness and our commitment to seek justice and peace for all people.”
These are powerful practices at any time, reorienting us away from the self-centeredness, tribalism, privilege, and scapegoating that destroy communities and undermine civil society. The power of Lent is in its collectivity, as we move as a body and set a communal intention that reorients and strengthens us to bear witness to the powerful message of a loving God in a world that needs mercy.
How do we engage in this reorientation? The bidding prayer has some suggestions:
“…by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”
Such acts are not easily wedged within an already busy schedule. And so perhaps one of the most essential things to give up during Lent is time. Interesting—giving up time, or spending time, is also using time. It’s not lost, really, but redirected.
We might add it on the edges of the day – getting up earlier, for example, or swapping a pre-bedtime book or show or internet scroll for a half-hour of quiet. We might wrap it around a mealtime, reducing what and how long we eat and adding a meditative walk or some moments sitting by a window or by a lit candle. In these holy containers, we might place some self-reflection, journaling, reading of Scripture, or spiritual texts.
Liturgy is like a full workout room for these Lenten exercises of self-reflection, prayer, listening, fasting, and giving. In addition to our 10 a.m. Sunday worship, our 9:30 a.m. Eucharist and healing service on Wednesdays offers space to lift the needs of others and to name our own needs for care and healing. A great deal of Lenten work can be done in one liturgical hour.
Even tiny, focused amounts of Lenten time can be powerful in a life that seems chaotic and exhausting. Resets are often micro-adjustments, explorations of small changes that society often insists are impossible or insignificant. They are also powerful little acts of resistance in a world that is not making much space for mercy, justice, and peace right now.
At a time when it seems like so much is happening that we cannot control, that we don’t have a say in, it’s helpful for me to remember that I have a say in my own life – even if I don’t have complete control over it. And in my say, I can cry out to Christ to form me, shape me, and use me in the way that I might best serve God at this time.
Making a bit of time just to breathe in and pray out might be my first and best offering this Lent.
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